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Foraging for the future: How museum curators will collect, and record, the history of COVID-19

Author of the article:

Liane Faulder

Publishing date:

May 20, 2020 • 5 minute read

Julia Petrov, Royal Alberta Museum curator of daily life and leisure, holds a bottle of locally produced hand sanitizer, an artifact from the COVID-19 pandemic. Beside her is an iron lung from the museum's display depicting the 1950s polio epidemic.David Bloom/ Postmedia

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While the rest of us may wonder what to make of the pandemic (bread seems to be the consensus), museum worker Julia Petrov knows exactly what to do with the whole experience. Preserve it.

As curator of daily life and leisure for the Royal Alberta Museum, Petrov is tasked with telling future generations what it meant to be living during the great pandemic of 2020. As such, when she sees a bottle of hand sanitizer — made locally by a brewery as a response to the pandemic — it’s not just an essential safety item. It’s iconic.

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“Whenever we take in an object, we take a story with it,” says Petrov. “Why did a brewery or distillery decide to turn their business into making hand sanitizer? And hopefully that story is not just an individual’s story, but it shows a bigger picture.”

As the RAM official responsible for recording how we actually live, day-to-day, Petrov has been scavenging artifacts, including yards of yellow tape cordoning off playgrounds (only the stuff that has blown away, mind you), plus masks, and bags used to deliver food — all items that will stand in for the way we coped during the massive shutdown currently occupying our every waking thought.

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The conversation willexplore how museums preserve, reflect and challenge our understanding of life-changing events. How do curators decide what’s important and what isn’t, and what lenses do various professionals use to examine events? How do museums connect artifacts and stories? Who are the heroes of a crisis, and how should they be remembered?

In a phone interview, Seidler Ramirez says there are a few factors that make 9/11 and COVID-19 quite different from the perspective of curators. While the ramifications of 9/11 are still felt today, it was a “finite event,” she says. COVID-19, on the other hand, is potentially a long-term phenomenon. While massive in its impact, the pandemic is also diffuse, affecting many millions of people and communities around the world.

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“It’s everywhere, it’s on the subway, it’s on playground equipment, it’s the last dinner you had with all kinds of friends in early March, it’s in the workplace. Our job is to, therefore, be looking very astutely at what’s happening at the time that the public is being asked to quarantine,” says Seidler Ramirez.

A quote from Virgil fills a wall of the museum at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum in New York. Getty Images/PostmediaGetty Images/Postmedia

Also, unlike the 9/11 memorial, or the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, the pandemic has no home, no single spot that can harness the deeply emotional connection attached to place that can help coalesce an experience.

“There will not be that one physical place that you can go as a pilgrim to pay respects or reflect. But you may be able to go into your town and see the 2020 version of a doughboy statue,” says Seidler Ramirez, referring to the ubiquitous First World War memorial of an American soldier with one arm raised in triumph. “It’s way too soon to say.”

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Heroes are also different with COVID-19 than 9/11, which saw more than 400 emergency workers lose their lives during the terrorist attack. COVID-19 heroes are health-care workers, and some have died. But grocery store clerks, and delivery people, are also making heroic efforts.

“In New York City, it’s people wearing bike helmets and restaurant aprons who are making sure the front lines get fed,” says Seidler Ramirez.

“I am really interested in these stories of how communities and people are coming together to protect each other during this time,” she says.

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“So how is this time bringing out the very best in our people and in our communities in terms of reforging human connections?” says Duhamel, who was the director of research for the National Inquiry for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. “The story I want to tell about COVID-19 is the story about resilience and strength. The crisis is part of that story. But what do moments like these do to help us reconnect?”

Duhamel’s expertise is with Indigenous issues, and there is a lot of activity around COVID-19 in that community.

“I’ve seen people come together to provide services for women and children in difficult domestic situations, and seen them come together to take part in social distant ceremonies like the giant social distance pow-wow happening on Facebook.”

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But Duhamel says remembering a crisis is not just a job for museums. Individuals are having profound experiences, and those should also be recorded.

“I would encourage people to think about what have been the great challenges during this time that they didn’t see coming, and what have been the successes or achievements, and how are those illustrated by the fabric of their lives,” she says.

It doesn’t mean you have to create a great work of art with paint and canvas.

“Maybe the thing that’s interesting is your to-do list with 88 things on it including 14 Zoom meetings for your kids around school,” she says. “What are the things that chronicle this experience in a way that someone looking at it through a distance of time or space, can say, ‘oh, yeah, I can see what was happening here.'”

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Seidler Ramirez advises that people living through the pandemic not get too caught up in the scary drama. She encourages folks to reflect on and record new rituals being spawned by COVID-19 through photos, or a diary, or social media posts. Museums, at the end of the day, are about collecting experiences, but also interpreting them. Citizens are capable of making meaning of their own experiences for now, and for the future.

“People need to get outside and celebrate. I love the unbelievable human creativity and desire to connect. These drive-by birthday parties, and graduation ceremonies,” says Seidler Ramirez. “Those are the wonderful things we should focus on, not our temperature, not waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

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